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Conservation Planning in a Changing Climate: Assessing the Impacts of Potential Range Shifts on a Reserve Network

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Landscape-scale Conservation Planning

Abstract

As climates change over the coming century, many species will ­experience range shifts. Some species that currently inhabit protected areas will move out of those areas and others will move in. Drawing on model projections from previous studies, we assessed potential changes in the representation of trees, birds, ­mammals, and amphibians in the protected areas of the Northern Appalachian/Acadian ecoregion of North America. Six of 17 tree species were projected to ­experience a reduction in the areas suitable for growth in the region’s protected areas and 11 of the 17 were projected to gain representation. Seven of 14 bird species were projected to experience losses in representation of their suitable habitat and the other seven were projected to experience gains. Range-shift projections for mammals and amphibians indicated that the protected areas would likely experience 13% and 21% turnover in these species, respectively with roughly half of the species ­experiencing losses of suitable habitat in the reserves and half ­experiencing gains. Despite these potential changes, protected areas are still likely to be one of the best tools for protecting biodiversity in a changing climate. One of the major challenges for the coming decades will be to provide the connectivity that will facilitate movement out of, and into, protected areas.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Evan Girvetz for assistance with the climate change analyses. We acknowledge the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) and the WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) for their roles in making available the WCRP CMIP3 multi-model dataset. Support of this dataset is provided by the Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy. We thank L. Iverson, S. Matthews, and M. Peters of the U.S. Forest Service for access to their tree and bird spatial data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Forest Resources, University of Washington, 352100, Seattle, WA, 98195-2100, USA

    Joshua J. Lawler

  2. Warnell School of Forestry & Natural Resources, University of Georgia, 180 E. Green St., Athens, GA, 30602-2152, USA

    Jeffrey Hepinstall-Cymerman

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  1. Joshua J. Lawler
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Correspondence to Joshua J. Lawler .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Biology and Program in Env, Middlebury College, Middlebury, 05753, USA

    Stephen C. Trombulak

  2. , Department Forestry and Natural Resource, Clemson University, Lehotsky Hall 261, Clemson, SC, 29634-0317, USA

    Robert F. Baldwin

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Lawler, J.J., Hepinstall-Cymerman, J. (2010). Conservation Planning in a Changing Climate: Assessing the Impacts of Potential Range Shifts on a Reserve Network. In: Trombulak, S., Baldwin, R. (eds) Landscape-scale Conservation Planning. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9575-6_15

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